Video
youtube
I was in Pittsburgh for just a day passing by, set up in a main square downtown called market square. After the stream ended a super sweet couple with a baby came up and sang and it was so nice, I still got a bunch of it on recorded. A highlight is posted above this one.
1 note
·
View note
Video
youtube
It was beautiful weather in Cleveland yesterday, I spent the day at Edgewater park, working away on my rig, then setup and jammed away. A few technical issues popped up but there were special moments for sure,,,look on my instagram to see a bunch of those moments www.instagram.com/luckypauls
1 note
·
View note
Video
youtube
This was my first stream today,,,the volume is low and mono, there are still some things to work out, but here it is.
I am playing in a Bus owned by my friend Richie Trimble. I met him randomly on my first day coming to Detroit. He told me of a movie he made with his friend Rick Darge,, who happens to live down the street from me in LA. The movie is about a guy who lucid dreams his way across the states on a road trip. This sparked my interest, especially when I heard there are a whole bunch of Alan Watts recordings throughout the movie.
I recently watched it and loved it so much,I highly recommend watching it as it kinda sends you to another space.
Richie has been very kind to let me use the bus, which they used to make this film and drive across the states in. I’ve been here for the last couple of weeks honing my setup, making sure it can stream, is easy to get around, making all the cables nice and ordered, and testing the thing out. So it’s all very fitting to have the first session in here. Detroit is a magical place and it has been an endless source of inspiration for me for the last good while, I’ll be sad to leave but excited for the next adventure…I’m driving to Cleveland tonight. Gonna find a spot to play there tomorrow.
0 notes
Photo
6 months ago I left LA on a big US roadtrip in a Chevy Astro van I kitted out to be a stealth camper,,,meaning I can sleep pretty much anywhere as it doesn’t look like a camper van. I’ve been having some of the most wonderful adventures of my life with this thing. It’s got everything I need, bed, kitchen, power, fridge, etc, but most of all, I’ve added a music making rig which I’ve been working on in Detroit for a while.
With it, I can make music anytime anywhere, stream it live to the internet, instantly sample sounds that people can send me, and jam with passerby’s or guests.
All the music is made from scratch and entirely in the moment. This whole journey is about improvisation and chance encounters in music and in travel…I’m now on the 2nd half of this journey and am gonna be sharing a bunch of it online.
I’ll be live streaming my music making sessions for about an hour everyday for the next leg of this trip (Detroit to Durham), before I fly back to LA in a week and go on tour soon after. The streams will be broadcast and archived here, so check back often, send me sounds when I’m playing and let me know interesting spots to setup and play!
0 notes
Video
youtube
This was after a night camping at Larrabee State Park in Washington. Was a clean and clear morning and it was probably the first time I’ve done this live sampling thing without feeling some sort of hurry or stressful technical limit,,,I often am having to do some weird balancing act to stop a crucial cable from falling out or something from crashing, etc, etc. I often always have somewhere to be soon when I do this too. I felt the full unrushed, uninhibited freedom this time around so made a longer than 1 minute version and put it up on my soundcloud too. https://soundcloud.com/lucky-paul
0 notes
Video
instagram
Well, it’s been a long while as is often the case with this blog, but thats ok,,time happens.
I’ve recently been keeping up to date with my musical journeys on Instagram, been putting up videos like the one above, follow me at @luckypauls for more.
I’m super happy to be on tour with Feist again. The new album Pleasure is out and it’s been pretty magical taking it to the road, most nights we play the album start to finish and it seems to be a never ending source of inspiration. There are always plenty of pure musical connection moments within the band every night and that’s what keeps me alive and happy!
It seems I’m doing the same thing I was 5 years ago, with sampling the world around me, only this time, my setup is rebuilt and alot faster and quicker to get to an end result.
This means I’ll be doing more videos and hopefully tracks much more frequently so follow along!
0 notes
Photo
I did a special gig in LA with my buddy Jamie Lidell recently. It was a Red Bull event created by Vita Motus, a company who does all sorts of futuristic stage show designs at all sorts of events. This one, was particularly special in that it was on a rooftop, inside a massive cube covered in video screens, built especially for the night. The whole show represented the evolution of music through technology, with the final phase representing the future where the walls of the cube became interactive, you would touch them and the visuals would change along with the sound.
Was so cool to be a part of this. For one, I knew me and Jamie had to do a gig together at some point and love that it was for this. He is a true legend of this live looping approach to live electronic music...He was doing this insane stuff with live looping 10 years ago, so far ahead of his time, and has one of the most soulful voices I've come across to boot...Was such a joy to put our 2 rigs together and just go. Because of our approaches, the music was completely different each time we played, so you reach this beautiful connected freedom through it. I know we will do more in the future and can't wait!
The next thing, was the concept. I'm really into the possibilities of utilizing new technologies to enhance and expand the experience of music...Was so awesome to be involved with something specifically about this, and to meet all these people who are so deep into it already. I believe music lives in more than just sound, so linking it to other senses and exploring other approaches of making it is what I'm gonna be exploring a whole bunch in the future.
Anyway, check out the photos, it was epic, I'm sure there will be videos of the thing at some point . Currently got more things and projects on the go I will update here in due time.
3 notes
·
View notes
Video
youtube
Another New Orleans moment. This was on Frenchmen St. I had just got setup and this guy came along. I love what he did, super loose crazy rhythm, with a musical sensitivity...So fun these moments that come up with random people. I found the best ones generally tend to be the more fleeting ones, where someone appears out of nowhere, has their say then disappears just as quickly. Mysterious chemistry of spontaneous creative collaborations in a public place...
3 notes
·
View notes
Video
youtube
Here's another one, this was on the night from the first video I posted. Was so much fun.
2 notes
·
View notes
Video
youtube
Video number 2! I'll be adding little stories into some of the videos like this one has, but some background, hmmm, this was early evening, close to Jackson Square, where there are a bunch of people doing all sorts of street art and performance. 2 special characters came up right after the other, a musical street cleaner who sings his way through the day, and a friendly vampire, who walks about the place scaring people but in a friendly way.
0 notes
Video
youtube
Here's the first little snippet of my New Orleans adventure...This was on the 4th of July, well technically the 5th at around 3am...The city was alive, it kind of always seems to be, but especially this night. As well as being independence day, Essence music festival was on, which meant all sorts of people from out of town came in to listen to music. I didn't get to catch any of the festival, but Prince played which means it would have been a good one. Anyway, no idea who this guy is, he just walked right up, spit (spat?) a little verse and then kept on walking, which I just love. I went for hours this night as a kind shop owner gave me power and lots of people came by to jam, I'll put some more bits from it up soon.
1 note
·
View note
Audio
This photo is from a very special journey I just returned from....A few weeks ago, I caught the train to Marfa, Austin, New Orleans and Nashville. Packed with my music making machine, a car battery, a P.A and a video camera, I set out to make music in the spaces that I visited, with whoever and whatever I came across.
The trip went better than I had imagined, and I now have a whole bunch of footage and music to go through and put up here soon. In the meantime, above is a jam I had with my buddy Brian LeBarton when I first got to Marfa. Brian is one of my favorite people to make music with, we hadn't played together for about a year. I set up my gear in his studio there, he played a yamaha DX7 synth and this was the result, all live straight to tape (computer).
Stay tuned for a whole bunch of videos, downloadable stems and other goodies from this adventure soon!
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Happy 2014!
Crazy it's already half way through, it really feels like it has only just begun. Here's a long overdue and thus long update to my tour diary...Things have been good and interesting, I've just come off 2 months touring around the states.
I recently joined a band called Lo Fang. Lo Fang is a talented chap from Baltimore who plays all sorts of instruments, loops them, improvises a whole bunch and can sing very well to boot. I met him late last year, we had a jam, it went very well, and that was pretty much that.
After going back home to NZ for christmas. I was set to get my US visa as Lo Fang had been offered the support slot for Lorde's US tour. It's a great story in that she got a hold of his record before it had been released, loved it, came to his 2nd show which had about 30 people in the audience, she asked him a few days later to join her on tour.
I joined the band as a percussionist and keyboard player, playing keyboards in bands is a new experience for me so I jumped at the chance, especially as I can develop the found sound percussion approach I've been working on, There is a lot of found sound on his record so it was a good fit. Anyway, things were set and moving fast, Letterman booked, US tour booked. Only it came to mid feb and my visa still hadn't come through. Visa's make life far more complicated than it should be. Thankfully, I just made it in the end. Had my visa come through a day later I wouldn't have made the tour which is a scary thought. I made it back to the states with enough time for one rehearsal and we were on letterman a couple of days later. This just in the nick of time, or pulling it off without much preparation seems to be the underlining experience with this project, but we always seem to get through and happy accidents often happen because of it.
After NYC we flew to Austin to begin the Lorde tour. This was a particularly special situation for me, being from the same city and country as her, but that having nothing to do with the fact I was on that tour was a very small worldish feeling. It was so great having a bunch of NZer's around on the road too, I often feel like an outsider with the bands I tour with but not so much this time. Anyway, the tour was great. We developed as a band. Lorde and her band killed it every night, connecting so strongly to her audiences. We played in a whole bunch of amazing theatres. It was a truly musical experience. There's me playing keyboards when Lo Fang and Lorde did a song together. It all felt very surreal to be there.
After a month of gigs playing support across the states, we basically went straight back on the road to play in the same cities we just had but as headliner shows. That also went great, plenty of adventure, development of the live show, and some also surreal tv appearances including the Today Show. It ended in Portland at the crystal ballroom where Reggie watts got up and played with us. He's a master of improvisation, we literally didn't say a word about what we'd play and just created from scratch on stage which is my favorite thing to do, it was a thrill to play with Reggie.
Special times. I'm now back in LA for a couple of weeks. Working very hard on my big project I am yet to reveal here at the right time, and also gonna be making music on the streets with a super lightweight but great sounding pa I just bought. Improvising music onstage is one thing, but still, nothing is quite like making music out in public at spontaneous times in spontaneous places and I'm still gonna do this whenever and wherever I can.
Plenty more instore for this year, sorry this is so out of date, thanks for reading, will continue to update on news and such!
2 notes
·
View notes
Photo
I'm back playing on the streets of Berlin! Did it for the first time in about 2 years today and it was just how I remember it, the perfect amount of pressure to create music on the spot...If you make music in a room by yourself it often doesn't have enough of an edge or enough vitality to it, and if you are at a show in a room full of people who have paid money to see you play, it can be hard to let ideas flow, knowing they are there to see a show, it can be difficult to create something from nothing every night, but on the street, noone is expecting anything, you can make as many mistakes as you like, if someone doesn't like what they are hearing they can just keep walking by...
I'm gonna be playing out in public as much as I can now, my setup allows me to multitrack record the results, quickly edit and mix the good jams onto little usb sticks to sell. No doubt in enough time I will pick the best of the best jams and create my next record from them...
9 notes
·
View notes